Shifra Goldenberg
International Intern

On Wednesday the 9^th of February, some tourists spotted Resilience and alerted the STE elephants and bees researchers, who were nearby in the field. The STE group was with her at noon, together with park rangers.She was lying in the sun in the heat of the day, far from any shade. She was convulsing when they first saw her.She may have rested there the night before and been unable to pick herself up when the sun came out, which means she was suffering for several hours.

When the rest of us at STE arrived, we found an animal very aware, watching us as her eyes rolled over repeatedly. Her trunk was inhaling but struggling, her back leg shaking under the weight of her body.Two bullet wounds, one in her chest and one higher up in her neck, oozed pus.  We poured water over her body and trunk to afford her some relief in these painful moments.It was at this stage of dying when Enthusiasm’s face was sawed off weeks earlier, her eyes still wide open.

We waited for Drs. Mutinda and Mohsin to arrive and determine that she should be put out of her misery. She was shot and is no longer suffering.

Once she was dead the KWS and STE teams worked to remove her tusks so they would be unavailable to poachers, and to retrieve the bullets that killed her, so we could learn something of the origins of this violence.

Her severed tusks sat on the ground, soon to be carefully stowed. It is difficult to imagine that those tusks are what this was all about.They were so beautiful when she carried them, and now they stand as ugly reminders of a heartbreaking past and a bleak future.

A matriarch was unnaturally killed in her prime, and consequently, an entire family is left vulnerable. Her youngest calf is unlikely to survive, and those in her bond group will no longer benefit from Resilience’s ecological and social knowledge.